The Hall of Records

The Hall of Records
The Hall of Records is the headquarters of The Fated. The building once was a college, but the Fated foreclosed on a slightly overdue debt and made it their home. After selling off the library (they didn't need it), the Fated settled into the broken campus and made it theirs. It wasn't long before they convinced the Speakers that the city needed to keep proper books, and who better to do it than the Fated, with all that shelf space? Now the Hall of Records is the center of Sigil's financial world. Foreign merchants file their bills of credit here, moneylenders set the official exchange rates, landlords register their property deeds, tax rolls are revised, and debtors' defaults are posted for the public to see. In another part of the Hall, records of the City Courts are filed in huge, dusty stacks, while elsewhere the proclamations of the Speakers are carefully copied for posting. The Fated run the City Mint, too, although almost every other faction closely supervises their work. In the private sections of the headquarters, the factol supervises the work on The Secret History of Sigil, a collection of all the Fated's doings and all the secrets their followers have learned.

The businesses that cluster around the Hall mirror life behind those walls. The great merchanthouses of Sigil maintain well-appointed townhouses in the district, where the ground floors hum with industry and the families live upstairs. The few respectable counting houses in Sigil do their business here as well. There are even fledgling "assurance companies," willing to protect a merchant's investment for a fee.

All this money attracts other business, too. Fancy inns cater to the merchant princes who sometimes come to town, while slightly less sumptuous places tend to the needs of their followers. Services are clean and efficient, though not spectacular. Food and lodging prices are both costly. Bodyguards, wizards, and mercenaries can be hired in most taverns, as can thieves. There's often a merchant looking for guards to accompany him to some far off plane, and sometimes there's special high-paying jobs for those willing to take the risk. Nothing is done without haggling or loud complaints over the cost of everything. The wealthy intend to stay that way, even if it means misery and hardship for others.